


Count the Shifts

by Elri (angelrider13)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Gen, Not In Chronological Order, Time Travel, connected one-shots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6715591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelrider13/pseuds/Elri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which they’re all doomed and Konoha’s most unpredictable ninja finds an obvious (to him at least) solution: time travel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What We Do Now Echos in Eternity

**Author's Note:**

> In which everyone’s dead, Naruto has a Plan, and the Bijuu are just along for the ride.

Ten figures gathered around a giant seal – one in the center and nine in a circle around him.

It was a scene the nine were familiar with. One they thought about often, in their dreams, during their long years of imprisonment. 

There were Nine and they had stayed Nine this time instead of being One broken into Nine parts. He had kept them separate – as individuals with names and faces and feelings and talents. But now he was the only one left, the only one in all the world still capable of fighting and without his other half, without his soul bonded brother, there was no hope of winning this fight.

Naruto smiled at the gathered Bijuu and pulled his fist away from their gathered claws. “You think you guys can remember all that?”

Kurama huffed at him. “Still underestimating us, brat?”

Naruto smirked. “Nah, you guys got this,” he said, voice full of sincere confidence despite the exhaustion that was clear on his face, “The nine of you together kicking ass and taking names? Please. They won’t know what hit them.”

“I don’t like this,” Shukaku grumbled, “Working with those old meat bags from before…”

Matatabi whacked him with one of her tails. “And this is a better alternative? Put old grudges aside.”

“Whine later, you damn brat,” Son Goku growled.

Naruto laughed at them even as his strength faded and he faltered. Kurama caught him, carefully lowering his former host to the ground. The blond smiled up at him in thanks as Saiken eyed him critically.

“Your strength is failing,” the Rokubi said in an uncharacteristically solemn voice.

“He’s dying,” Kurama hissed, stuck between grief and fury.

“It’s fine,” Naruto said softly, “I knew this would happen when I let you all out.”

“You are sure this will work?” Isobu cut in when it looked like Kurama was gearing up for another argument about his host’s idiocy.

Naruto nodded. “Yeah. I’ll send you back as far as I can, but then it will be up to you guys. You have to work _together_ ,” he said, turning to stare down each of them, “Not just with each other, but with your jinchuuriki too. You’re stronger together.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Kurama said, rolling his eyes, “Those who abandon their friends are worse than trash, blah, blah, we get it.”

Naruto snorted. “Stop worrying so much, fluffy,” he said with a sly grin as he held out his fist, “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Kurama narrowed his eyes, knocked their fists together regardless, face falling into naked surprise as he felt the chakra flow into him.

“You –”

“It won’t be the same,” Naruto cut in, smirk gentling into a smile, “But it won’t be that different. You’re my friend, Kurama. Always.”

The two stared at each other for a long moment. The others were silent, letting them be. This was hard for all of them and none of them were particularly keen on the idea. But with Sasuke gone, there was no way to seal Kaguya. This was the only option left to them and they had to take it or let her win. And Naruto refused to let her win even if this option guaranteed his death.

Already they could feel his life force fading, the only thing keeping him alive were the barest remnants of their chakra. Just enough for this last task, this last act.

“Alright!” Naruto cried, clapping his hands together, “Let’s do this. You guys ready?”

They were.

The blond smiled at them, soft and sincere and so full of faith. “I believe in you guys.  Take ‘em down, alright?”

They would.

For this boy they would.

He who called them by their names. He who called them friend, who treated them as comrades, as people, but never weapons, never tools. He who told them that they were so much more than that, that they _deserved_ so much more than that.

For him they would succeed.

A surge of chakra, a flash of light and the bijuu and seal were gone.

Naruto sat back, already feeling the pull of unconsciousness, his mind becoming sluggish. But that didn’t matter because it _worked_.

There was a shift in the air and Naruto turned to see Kaguya stepping through a rip in space, finally having worked her way around his barrier. She gazed at him with eyes so like Hinata’s, so like Neji’s, that it made his heart ache.

“What have you done?” she asked as she knelt by him, voice soft and smooth and gentle like he always thought a mother would sound, but for the wrongness the tone stirred in his gut. She reached out and cupped his cheek, a frown pulling at her lips. She felt it, he realized. She knew he was dying, knew that he didn’t have the chakra left to sustain his life any longer, knew that there were nine presences missing from his body. Nine presences that should be hers – that _were_ hers – and they were gone now.

He grinned up at her, all teeth and sharp edges and feral victory, eyes burning with a will that had never diminished no matter what she had thrown at him, even as he felt himself slipping away.

_“You lose.”_


	2. Ripples on the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rin becomes a jinchuuriki, Obito gets hit with some hard facts (literally), and Isobu is absolutely done with all this bullshit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let the time travel shenanigans begin!

Isobu had vague memories of this.

Ever since the Bijuu had been sealed, he’d been with Kiri.

There was only one instance where his host was from somewhere else. A girl, he remembered, with a crude, flimsy seal that had cracked and crumbled so easily in the face of his fury.

But Isobu was calm now.

There was no mindless rage at being sealed yet again, as being used as a tool _yet again_.

Not this time.

The girl was of Konoha, she is of Naruto’s village.

And she had died the first time around.

He remembered the lightning, searing, burning, ripping through this girl’s chest as she chose death over setting him on her village.

He remembered the owner of that lightning – the boy with silver hair and one eye of red and the horrified grief on his face. He remembered Naruto’s love for the man who would become his teacher.

He remembered fading, his chakra dissipating as the girl’s life fled her body, remembered the fury that filled the clearing and the appearance of another boy he later became far too familiar with as he pulled his host’s strings.

He remembered all of it and he wasn’t going to let it happen again.

Not again.

If he could change this – this one thing – the ripples would be felt for ages.

He had promised.

So when the seal was completed and the girl released to Kakashi, Isobu turned away from the fragile seal that held him and looked towards the seal over the girl’s heart. The one that prevented her from speaking of him, from warning anyone of Kiri’s – _Madara’s_ – plans. The one that drove her to return to her village, to release him, to destroy her home.

Isobu turned to this seal and threw his might against it instead.

The chakra that made the seal what it was recoiled and hissed, digging its hooks in tighter, coiling, squeezing, strangling.

Isobu growled and pulled at the taint, burning it out, corroding it away.

He could feel the girl’s desperation and knew that he was running out of time.

He reached for that place in his mind where his siblings dwelled, where they were all connected, and he _pulled_. He showed them what happened Before, felt them understand why this needed to change, why he _could not fail_.

Saiken and Gyuki surged forward the same moment the girl threw herself onto lightening; they had the best regenerative powers and started repairing flesh the exact moment it was destroyed. Matatabi and Son Goku took the lightning and redirected it – away from vital organs and towards the seal and the tainted chakra screeched as it was burned away. The others funneled chakra to him and Isobu circulated it through the girl’s body to keep it alive, to keep it _functioning_ , long enough to heal.

He felt the girl fading out – not dying, not yet, not _again_ – falling unconscious. He pulled her under and put her to sleep, pushing her consciousness down while his own rose up to take its place, his siblings watching through his eyes.

He’d had enough.

Enough puppets and tools and plots.

He’d made a promise.

For better or worse, this girl was his jinchuuriki.

He would not let her die.

Not again.

* * *

 

Obito was cold.

Before, whenever he was angry, he always, always burned hot. He yelled and he screamed and he hit and he kicked until he was either beaten or calmed down. Before, anger always meant fire. It meant ashes and smoke and hot words and searing pain and seething glares.

That was before.

Before he watched Kakashi put his hand through Rin’s chest.

Before he watched Rin throw herself on Kakashi’s attack.

Before the lightning and the smell of burnt flesh and the blood dripping down Rin’s chin and the horrified tears streaming down Kakashi’s cheeks.

Now anger meant something different.

Now it meant ice.

Now it meant cold and unfeeling and numb.

Now it meant single-minded, blind, unending _fury_ that froze his heart and blood.

When the Kiri nin broke into the clearing, Obito didn’t hesitate. His chakra surged, exploding outward in wooden spikes and roots and branches – piercing, strangling, tearing.

Rin was dead.

Rin was deaddeaddead.

They killed her.

They killed her so he slaughtered them.

Their blood was like everyone else’s. It was warm and sticky and redredred and he didn’t care.

Rin was dead.

His eye burned but he barely felt it. He barely felt anything besides cold. He was numb.

Rin was dead.

Rin was dead.

 _Rin_ was _dead_.

Rin was…sitting up.

Rin was dead but she was sitting up and looking at him.

Guruguru gasped. “She was dead, we saw,” he said, puzzled, “But now she’s not.”

“Rin,” he croaked, reaching out to cup her cheek, wrenching back in surprise when his fingertips passed through her.

Right, that had happened. He’d noticed that nothing touched him, not since he’d started attaching. But this was Rin. Rin was different. Rin was safe. Rin was not dead.

Rin who was watching him with gold on red ringed eyes.

Rin who was healing so quickly, he could _see_ the wound in her chest closing.

Concentrating, he reached out again and this time, his hand met skin.

Rin smiled at him, bright and happy, just like always.

And then she put her hand through his chest.

Obito stared at her, eye wide, lips parted in shock. “What?”

“ **Relax** ,” Rin said, and that was not Rin’s voice; it was too deep, too rough, _not right_ , “ **This won’t kill you – I just need to get rid of that annoying seal on your heart.** ”

And then he saw Rin’s chakra flow change, the color was wrong. He remembered it even though he’d only seen it once before ( _lavender, soft, bright, the perfect color for her, shhhh, don’t cry Rin_ ) and this was something different. Something else, something _greater_ was seeping into Rin’s chakra coils. It poured out of her body, forming a cloak around her, flowing up her arm and –

It _burned_.

Guruguru screamed and unraveled, releasing him and without him there to hold him up, Obito fell. Not-Rin caught him, cradled him and the searing chakra gentled as she withdrew her hand from his chest.

Obito didn’t understand.

“I don’t – what are you –?”

“ **Hush, boy** ,” Not-Rin said, strange-wrong eyes watching the way Guruguru wreathed on the ground as if in pain, “ **I will explain in a moment. First, I must deal with the creature.** ”

She laid him down carefully and Obito watched the chakra that cloaked her surge and then she was on Guruguru. He could do nothing but watch in shock as she cut into his friend, his companion these long months, over and over until there was nothing left.

* * *

 

It was easy to call forth chakra.

The girl’s body reacted to it automatically, channeling it into the hands and sharpening it so that it can cut through flesh with ease. Not how he would normally do things, but Isobu was very satisfied by the feeling of sinking the chakra scalpels into White Zestu’s flesh.

Logically, he knew that White Zetsu is just one of many – a victim of Kaguya, a minion, easily replicable.

But emotions were not logical and Isobu still remembered the exhaustion in Naruto’s face when he smiled at them that last time, the way his entire body seemed to sag under the weight that only he was left to bear. All nine of them knew that Naruto had died. Died to free them, to save them, to give them this second chance. But he still died.

And that made Isobu _burn_.

He channeled all of that rage and grief and pain into his host’s hands and used it to crush White Zetsu until he was nothing but dust.

Only then did he turn away.

Only then did he return to Obito’s side.

The boy was looking up at him, wide eyed and horrified. Isobu sank to the ground next to him, checking over the hole in his chest and was pleased to see that it was almost healed.

He had mixed feelings on Obito – they all did.

The man they knew had caused them nothing but pain. Sought them out and ripped them from their hosts one by one to create a weapon that would give him a false world. A lie. He saw them as tools, had treated them as such. Thought them mindless and emotionless and nothing but things to be used.

But then he turned away from the lie and gave them to Naruto. Gave them to Naruto and shielded him and protected him until it killed him.

The man Obito was had been the enemy, the enslaver, the monster in the dark.

But he had also been the ally, the shield, the spark that starts an inferno.

Isobu knew the man that Obito was.

He did not know this boy.

“Rin?” Obito asked, voice soft and creaked and broken.

Hm, so that was the name of his host.

“ **Rin is sleeping** ,” he said.

Obito’s eye narrowed, Mangekyō Sharingan spinning slowly. “Who are you?” he demanded, struggling to sit up.

“ **The Sanbi** ,” Isobu said because working with the humans was one thing, he was not going to start handing out his name to everyone. No, the first to get his name was going to be his host and until then he would be nameless.

Obito paled. “What – how – ?”

Isobu sighed and gestured to the boy’s chest. “ **The same man who put that seal on your heart had me sealed into this girl** ,” he explained, because he remembered this, remembered how wrong it was, remembered how it didn’t make sense, even if he was only distantly aware of it the first time around, remembered the man that Obito was screaming at Madara as they clashed, “ **They put the same seal on her heart and controlled her so that she would release me in your village. She chose to take another way out** ,” he said gesturing to the mostly healed wound in Rin’s chest.

Obito frowned. “But…you saved her,” he said, though it sounded like a question.

“ **I did** ,” Isobu answered, “ **You may make of that what you will.** ”

Obito eyed him, licking his lips before carefully asking. “What did you mean about the seal on my heart?”

“ **It allows the person who placed it to control you, perhaps not your mind, but it can control everything else.** ”

“He set me up,” Obito whispered, eye narrowed, anger flickering across his face but not surprise.

Isobu snorted. “ **Of course he did. Madara has been lost in the thrall of your clan’s curse since the moment he took his brother’s eyes.** ”

Obito’s gaze snapped over to him in surprise.  “You know about that? That’s part of the clan’s most closely guarded history!”

Isobu gave him a flat look. “ **I am a millennia old being; you think your clan can stop me from knowing something?** ” he said dryly.

“Ah,” Obito said sheepishly, “Right.”

Isobu rolled his eyes and pushed up to his feet, frowning as he wavered slightly. He would have to rest soon. His host’s body was already far past its limit. Still, Isobu didn’t like how spread out they were right now. He walked over to Kakashi, scooping up the unconscious boy into his arms as best he could and all but dragged him over to Obito.

“Is he alright?” the boy asked.

“ **You didn’t seem to care before** ,” Isobu said flatly, making Obito flinch, “ **He’s fine, just chakra exhaustion.** ”

He knelt down, curling up between the two boys who he’d known as men, who Naruto had fought with in that distant future-past, Rin’s hands taking each of theirs in hers in a way that felt so natural, Isobu had to wonder at this girl.

“What are you doing?” Obito asked warily as the chakra cloak receded.

“ **I am going to sleep** ,” he said simply, “ **Rin has reached her limit and if I push her much longer, I could damage her. She needs rest. Reinforcements will be here soon.** ”

With that, Isobu closed his eyes and retreated.

* * *

 

Obito stared down at his teammates.

Rin was alive.

She was alive because of the demon inside her.

The demon that Madara put there.

To hurt his village. His home.

To hurt Rin.

Because of him.

Obito wasn’t stupid for all that he might seem like it. He knew exactly what he was thinking when he thought Rin was dead. He would have remade the world for her, would have gone with Madara’s plan because it would give him Rin back.

Just like Madara wanted.

Guruguru had let him out of the cave so that he would see Rin die. So that he would lose faith in the world.

And it would have worked if the Sanbi hadn’t interfered.

Obito had no idea how to even comprehend that. He’d just had a conversation with a bijuu sealed inside the girl he loved. A bijuu who was apparently far more than then mindless chakra monsters they were made out to be.

His eye drifted over to Kakashi.

“ _You didn’t seem to care before.”_

Obito felt his stomach churn. He’d completely ignored Kakashi, hadn’t even spared him a single thought. The boy looked exhausted and worn down, bags under his eyes and a gray pallor to his skin. He remembered the way Kakashi had put himself between Rin and the Kiri nin, how he worked himself to this point to keep Rin safe, to keep his promise. He remembered the way Kakashi had screamed after Rin had thrown herself onto his jutsu. Remembered seeing Rin’s bloody smile and the way her lips formed the word ‘sorry’ through the eye he’d given to his teammate.

His teammates.

He released a shuddering sigh. “So much for never abandoning my comrades,” he muttered, bitterly.

Never again.

_Never again._

He looked up as multiple chakra signatures entered the clearing.

He met their stunned eyes with a weak smile.

“Obito?!”

Ah, Genma. He’d gotten pretty tall these past few months.

He waved sheepishly at the older boy even as the Konoha nin swarmed him and his team, speaking to him, but he was beyond caring. He ached all over and his head hurt and it was kind of freaking him out that he no longer had a hole in his chest. Their words washed over him, not registering at all. They checked over Kakashi and Rin and he was only able to clench his hand weakly around Rin’s as they tugged them apart.

 Genma zeroed in on him when he started listing to the side, hauling him up and throwing Obito’s arm over his shoulders.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Genma growled, “Kakashi would kill me if I let you get away now.”

For some reason, the very thought made him grin like an idiot. “Would he?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Genma hissed, “Fuck Obito, you haven’t seen him. Him or Rin. God, and your sensei. No, you are coming home. You are _six months late, asshole_.”

And Obito laughed, perhaps a little hysterically, but relief settled deep into his bones.

He was going home.

* * *

 

His host was sleeping, no longer in danger of fading.

His host was young but now had the chance to grow older. She’d been gifted a second chance just as they had.

His siblings had retreated now, content in the knowledge that they had succeeded. They had dropped a stone in the pond and now they must wait to see how the ripples spread.

He was old, older than most humans understood and he knew what it was to be patient.

His host slept.

Isobu waited.


	3. Every Grain of Sand is a Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Gaara is teeny tiny and Shukaku is not a babysitter. Really, he’s not.

Shukaku wanted to bury his head in the sand and stay there.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do him any good.

He’d already tried that and it hadn’t helped in the slightest.

No matter how far he burrowed, he just couldn’t escape the wailing. He did not remember his host screaming this much the first time around. Or maybe he’d just been better at ignoring it then. Honestly, couldn’t these damn humans figure out a way to shut up their own spawn?

Apparently not because Gaara had been screaming for _hours_ and it didn’t look like he was going to stop anytime soon.

Tch. Useless all of them. They’re so scared of him they’ll let the kid suffer and not feel the slightest bit of guilt over it.

“You better appreciate this, brat,” he grumbled.

Suna had never been particularly good at sealing. That wasn’t to say they were _bad_ , exactly – the seal did its job, it kept him contained, but that was literally all it did. The only thing the seal he was under now did was keep him trapped within Gaara’s body. So it was no effort at all to find the boy’s consciousness and drag it into his mindscape.

The little boy before him was nothing like the obedient, blood thirsty child he had crafted or the Kage with a spine of steel strong enough to weather even the harshest of sandstorms. No, he wasn’t even old enough to be considered a boy – he was a baby, not a warrior. No control whatsoever of his body; he flailed and stumbled and had absolutely no balance. His head was too big and his limbs too scrawny and he looked far too squishy to take a hit.

His lungs worked just fine though.

“Oi, brat.”

Gaara visibly startled, a flinch wracking his entire body, head jerking up. Shukaku found himself staring into a pair of wide, wet, pale eyes.

Well now what?

“You’re loud,” the Ichibi said after a long moment.

Gaara made a sound somewhere between a hiccup and a sniffle.

Shukaku groaned. “This is ridiculous. What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” he grumbled, “I can’t do anything with you; you’re _tiny._ I can’t fight you when you’re tiny.”

Gaara shifted, crawling over to him and reaching out to touch one of his claws with a tiny hand.  “San’,” he said, patting Shukaku firmly.

The Ichibi huffed. “What of it, brat?”

“San’,” Gaara said again, looking utterly pleased with himself.

Shukaku rolled his eyes and sighed loudly. “Fine, fine,” he said and with a wave, sand swirled around them, twisting and twining through the air. “How’s  that?”

Gaara squealed and clapped his hands, pale eyes bright in a way that Shukaku could never remember seeing in his host before. The boy reached out for the sand, fearless in a way that only small children ever are, watching with a mesmerized expression as it curled around his fingers and up his arm to lightly caress his cheek. Gaara giggled at the touch, light and happy.

Shukaku settled back to watch as his host played with the sand, every so often shifting the grains in the air into a different shape or moving them in a new way that would make Gaara laugh and smile and clap.

“Work with them, huh?” he murmured to himself, watching as Gaara tried to give chase to cat made of sand, his small, awkward limbs making the simple task into a challenge.

Still, the boy didn’t quit and his smile never dimed. His laughter echoed through their shared mindscape, loud and free, but Shukaku couldn’t find it in himself to mind. It was far better than the constant screaming after all.

This boy was not the one he’d left behind, the one he’d been taken from. The one who’d defended him as best he could even after all the torment and pain Shukaku had put him through. The one who’d become a Kage in spite of what he was and what Shukaku did to him. The one who died protecting his friend.

No, this boy was not that boy.

Would probably never be that boy.

Because Shukaku already knew that what he did to Gaara before, he’d never be able to do again.

Not after everything that had happened.

But not tormenting him and working with him were two very different things and generations of anger and resentment didn’t disappear overnight. The humans had never been kind to him, never saw him as anything other than a monster, a tool, a weapon.

Yet Gaara had always been just as much a victim of their cruelties as he – not even born into the world before Shukaku was sealed inside him.

Shukaku didn’t think he could work with humans, not yet. But Gaara was young, so very, very young. A baby really. There was time and for all he hated it, his confinement had taught him patience. He could wait. There was no rush to fulfill the request that had been made of him and siblings. Not yet.

Did he want to work with the humans?

No, he didn’t.

But could he work with Gaara?

The boy smiled up at him from atop a large pile of sand, the cat curled up in his arms.

“We’ll see, Naruto,” Shukaku said, “We’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Time travel is a thing that has happened. Prepare for mass confusion. Don't forget to drop a comment!


End file.
